I’ve been working through my carded alpaca rolags (although they have unrolled in the basket so are now more like small batts) both with the upcycled wheel and walking with the drop spindle. The charkha-like motion of the converted stationary mini bike means I have to wrap the newly spun yarn into a cone shape on the spindle. To ply, I like to have center-pull balls, so I have to rewrap the yarn.

I’ll let the balls sit for while, then get to plying. The thicknesses of yarn produced by the two different methods is close enough that I will combine it all together into one skein.

I’ve been stalking online spinning groups, reading others’ questions and the answers given. On a post about drive bands on spinning wheels, I read a discussion on cotton versus hemp bands and adjusting the tension, and in that discussion someone causally mentioned stretchy drive bands. Hm? What an intriguing idea. I dug through my stash and found some stretchy cord usually used for jewelry. Only the largest diameter (1.5mm) was still in decent condition, the rest had dry rotted and was brittle. Taking the warning for the long term stability of rubber, I tossed the useless bits and used the thicker cord for my bicycle spinning wheel.

I had been having trouble with the cotton cord drive band slipping, even with a couple coats of beeswax. So I removed it and tried the clear rubber cord with surgeon’s knot. While I was experimenting, I also wrapped a couple tiny rubber bands around the spindle’s hub to give some grip. It took a couple tries to get the tension right, but then everything worked even better! Hurray!

I’m still nursing my achilles tendon back to health. PT helped with the surrounding muscle strength, and I was approved to start taking walks again! My first walk I paid close attention to the road, so did not take my spinning. The second walk I grabbed my spindle and fiber! I still have quite a bit of build up to get through to take the long walks I used to, by at least I’m back on the road.

Although I made a different way for the spindle to mount on my mini bike spinning wheel, I’m glad I didn’t cut off the original top slots as I wanted to do to clean up the look. They make a decent place to rest the spindle as I’m winding off onto a nostepinne. (Ok, winding off onto my drop spindle which works also as a nostepinne when turned upside down.) I did need to add weight to counterbalance the yarn on the spindle, so grabbed a nearby pair of scissors and hung them on the end. Eventually I’ll come up with a more elegant solution, or at least something that holds on better.